Raise en­ergy bar higher: ex­perts

Two lead­ing sus­tain­able built en­vi­ron­ment groups are urg­ing a re­think of build­ing guide­lines in the North West in an ef­fort to re­duce emis­sions and power bills.

The Built to Per­form in North­ern Aus­tralia re­port by the Aus­tralian Sus­tain­able Built En­vi­ron­ment Coun­cil and Cli­mateWorks Aus­tralia rec­om­mended de­vel­op­ment of a new na­tional con­struc­tion code with stronger en­ergy per­for­mance stan­dards.

Mod­el­ling of var­i­ous build­ings found en­ergy sav­ings of up to 27 per cent in res­i­den­tial, 38 per cent in com­mer­cial and 56 per cent in pub­lic sec­tor build­ings could be found if stronger con­struc­tion guide­lines were im­ple­mented.

“Im­proved en­ergy per­for­mance of build­ings presents a win-win­win op­por­tu­nity by re­duc­ing stress on the elec­tric­ity net­work, of­fer­ing bill sav­ings and sup­port­ing a least­cost path­way to a zero car­bon built en­vi­ron­ment, while im­prov­ing health and re­silience out­comes for house­holds and busi­nesses,” she said.

“Right now, in­dus­try lead­ers are de­liv­er­ing build­ings that per­form far bet­ter than the code’s min­i­mum stan­dards but in­creased min­i­mum en­ergy re­quire­ments in the 2022 re­vi­sions to the code will de­liver in­dus­try the cer­tainty to roll this out na­tion­wide and drive down costs. “At the same time, State and Ter­ri­tory gov­ern­ments should en­cour­age build­ing ma­te­ri­als and de­signs which are best suited to spe­cific lo­cal en­vi­ron­ments.”

En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Melissa Price said the Coun­cil of Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ments would con­sider build­ing en­ergy ef­fi­ciency re­forms at the end of the year.

Ms Price said this would in­clude propos­ing cost-ef­fec­tive im­prove­ments for the Na­tional Con­struc­tion Code in 2022.